US: Tropical Storm Debby stalls off Carolinas

ATLANTA: Tropical Storm Debby brought unrelenting rain to the United States (US) as it drifted off the Carolinas on Wednesday, threatening the region with dangerous flooding before picking up speed in the coming days and moving north.

At least six people have died in Florida and Georgia in the wake of the storm, which made landfall on Florida’s Gulf Coast on Monday as a Category 1 hurricane and headed northeast. It is expected to next menace the southeastern and mid-Atlantic coasts for days.

Read more: Debby, now a tropical storm, soaks northern Florida

Governors in the Carolinas, Florida and Georgia have declared states of emergency. The storm has already left neighborhoods and communities underwater with widespread flooding washing out streets and inundating homes across the region.

“All North Carolinians across our state need to be prepared for a deluge,” North Carolina Governor Roy Cooper said at a briefing at the state’s Department of Emergency Management on Wednesday.

Officials in Charleston, South Carolina, lifted a citywide curfew on Wednesday, saying crews on standby were not needed to conduct any rescues overnight as the worst of the storm passed through.

Even so, the storm could still deliver another 3 to 9 inches of rainfall to the Carolina coast, the National Weather Service said. That would bring rain totals to 25 inches in South Carolina and 15 inches in southeastern North Carolina near Wilmington and coastal Georgia.

Debby was about 85 km southeast of Charleston on Wednesday afternoon and moving northeast about 5 km per hour toward the Northeast, with maximum sustained winds of 97 kph. It was forecast to make landfall again further north in South Carolina on Thursday morning, the National Hurricane Center said.

Debby’s greatest threat remains the sheer volume of rain it is dumping on the Eastern Seaboard and the potential for flooding that could continue into next week. In South Carolina, 15 homes had suffered major damage and one had been destroyed as a result of Debby’s flooding.

Parts of Virginia were expected to get 3 to 7 inches of rain through Friday, while 2 to 4 inches were forecast for parts of Maryland, Pennsylvania and upstate New York through Saturday, with risks of flash floods, the center said.

“This is certainly an extreme rainfall event,” said Neil Dixon, a National Weather Service meteorologist in Charleston, noting that daily rainfall records have already been broken in the area. “In that respect, the flooding has been something that we haven’t seen in many years.”

Read more: Why typhoons, hurricanes, cyclones are getting stronger

Emergency management officials were keeping a close watch as the rainwater drained into the numerous river systems that snake through the Carolinas. The National Water Prediction Service forecast that seven waterways would reach major flood levels before the weather event runs its course.